Monday, September 30, 2013

Youth To Pack Fairview Meeting?

EXPECT A ROOM FULL OF URCHINS
Word around town is that parents of youth sports participants have been asked to present their kids - in uniform - at the meeting of the Fairview Park Citizens Advisory Committee Wednesday beginning at 6:00 p.m. at the Neighborhood Community Center that evening to show support for speakers scheduled that night who will plead their case for playing fields in the park. It seems that some members of their leadership feel that the youth sports groups have been under-represented so far. Their view is that only the voices of those who want to keep the park as it is have been heard so far.

REALLY?
When I heard that comment I did a classic double-take, because there are several members of the committee who have been quite vocal on the issue from the beginning. In fact, based on their comments, some of the members would be very happy to cover most of the park with fields.

ON A SCHOOl NIGHT?
So, I guess you can expect the meeting Wednesday to be packed with children on a school night to plead for more fields.

MAY BE A MOOT POINT
Unfortunately, because of imprudent actions by a misguided few recently, the federal government is now deeply involved in the park and their representatives are not a bit happy with our stewardship of that municipal treasure. It is possible, based on the thoughtless, selfish actions by a few, that the park will be placed off limits for any kind of future "enhancements".

ATTEND AND SEE
To make your views known to the committee and leaders at the meeting, step up and speak up.

I am really saddened that Mensinger and Righeimer, and their ilk have no problem using their kids as pawns in this turmoil. Its about as sickening as Popp calling people Nazis. When you have to stoop to those levels, you've already lost.

Geoff, you are right though, they have Mensinger, Righeimer and the rest of the idiots they appointed on their side already, so why the costume show?

Drive by any of the schools in Mesa Verde between 4 and 7 each week night, which I do and I'm sure Righeimer and Mensinger do as well. You'll see plenty of room for teams to practice soccer or flag football or whatever. My kids practice there, and it's not hard finding space. I'm sure you'd see the same thing in the rest of the city. Maybe the people in Mesa Verde just don't know where the schools are, since so many of them ship their kids to school in HB anyway.

I have kids ages 5 and 7, and they play all sports. It seems to be working out, other than parking at the Farm on a Friday night when flag football is going on (nightmare), but we manage.

Leave Fairview alone, or just come out and say what your plan is. Don't dance around it, man up and let's do this!

AYSO sent out a mass email asking parents to bring their kids, in uniform. You can see a copy of the letter posted on the Costa Mesa Facebook page. They want to make sure they are as represented as Pop Warner! My sister was appalled when she received the email.

The City has assembled the Fairview Park Citizens Advisory Committee to determine the future of the park and the many possible uses. Currently the only voices have been expressing that we keep the park as a wildlife preserve. With the rise in the number of families in the city, we are quickly running out of field space for organized youth sports and a proposal is coming up to add youth sports facilities on parts of the land. Numerous youth groups will be present at the meeting and we would also like to have some support from AYSO 120 at the meeting.

Here is a request from a related group:------------------------------ ----------------------Also try and really get as many of your board members, coaches, parents, etc…out to the meetingthis Wednesday at 6:00pm at CM Neighborhood Community Center and speak during public comment and/or just fill the audience. Kids in uniforms is certainly not unheard of and everyone would be out of the meeting by 7:00pm. We have a lot of opposition to keep this entire park passive, so we need to show in numbers to this meeting. Emails are good to,FairviewPark@costamesaca.gov. Please spread the word. Agenda attached.------------------------------ -----------------------

If you can make it to the meeting, that would be wonderful. If you have some positive things to say in favor of youth sports in the city, even better.

Thanks for all of your hard work and dedication to the children of our region!! Please show your support

Using kids as political pawns is despicable.It began with Mensinger trotting out the entire football team from EHS to push for more sale and discharge days for fireworks.Kent Mora may be at this meeting Wednesday, for the Fairview Park Citizens Advisory Committee,camcorder ready or another lackey will film it to post on the CMTA FB page.Is Mensinger on the Fairview Park Citizens Advisory Committee? If so,he should resign.He's done enough to damage to Fairview Park.

"Costa Mesa is in dire straits when it comes to adequate playing fields for the youth of our city. We, quite simply, don't have enough of them. Every city official and elected or appointed leader who has addressed this subject agrees - we don't have enough fields for our kids. This problem has recently been emphasized by the controversy about people kicking balls around smaller, neighborhood parks. Lighting all The Farm fields would provide near-term relief to this problem and take some of the pressure off our officials as they go about developing long-term solutions."

Those guys sure know how to drag the kids into it for their benefit, don't they? I'm ashamed of Pop Warner, AYSO etc. This is your agenda, not that of the children. Leave them out of it. Righeimer learned (if that's possible); Sessler hopefully learned; you just don't hold your children out in front of you in a fight. If asked, the kids most likely would like to leave the park alone.

I am curious how the adult volunteers get anything out of this? I, like I am sure several here, have volunteered thousands of hours for youth activities since my kids were little. Other than making it less stressful for volunteers to put on program and let more kids, who want to, sign up. I am missing where my dividend is in this.

"The late Peggy Mensinger left a lasting impact on Modesto in several regards. Before and during her years as a councilwoman and mayor, from 1973 to 1987, she spearheaded significant efforts to preserve farmland by slowing growth and to reduce the influence of developers on city politics.

In 1987, she successfully advocated for what she called the Tin Cup ordinance, its name from the theme: Time Is Now, Clean Up Politics.

With this ordinance, Modesto went beyond the period campaign contribution reports required by state law, to say that the city clerk must maintain running records showing how much and how many contributions candidates had received over the preceding four years. The list tracks all donations of $100 or more.

Mensinger's goal was to discourage people, namely developers, from trying to buy the votes of council members."

Anybody or group that would beg and plead for parents to drag their kids down to a BS meeting and parade them around in their sports uniforms just to draw some sympathy votes is not right in the head, but we already knew that members of this City Council and it's farce appointment of followers and hanger-ons have never been mentally there.

Kids have been used to promote causes of all types. Let's start with kids protesting for teacher benefits or against layoffs. You have seen them on the news, do you think that wasn't encouraged by the teachers' unions?

Watch school board meetings when a program is being dropped, reconsidered or added. Notice the number of times students are encouraged to show up and state their support?

I get that the majority here has a culture of everything Righeimer is bad, but some critical thinking must happen on occasion, even if by accident.

We miss you, Geoff. Your absence at the last city council meeting was notable and noted. When ya comin' back?

Walking past Luke C. Davis field, as I do upon occasion, I note a prepossessing sign that limits field usage to organizations which have applied and been approved. The night of the Fairview Park meeting, there was a small bunch of kids there within the fence practicing soccer kicks, well-regimented, with a couple of adults supervising. I note this because it is unusual to see the Davis field in use; most of the time it is locked up, and neither is the fine set of restrooms on the west side of the field available. More often, I see the greensward between the fence and the gymnasium in use by older guys playing a pickup game of soccer with makeshift goals. Mostly, these guys are Mexican/Hispanic. They seem to be having fun, and staying occupied and out of trouble. The rest of the park in many spots suffers drainage problems; should a couple of people want to kick a ball around, they have to avoid the squishy spots.

Now, I don't understand the game of soccer. The time or two I watched a game, the phrase I heard most often was "Sub, Ref!" Beyond that, I guess the object is to kick the ball into the goal, and not to touch it with your hands. Baseball is more my sport, and Davis field is laid out well for hardball. The trouble is, I don't see many games going on there; even at the height of the baseball season, players were there usually fewer than three nights a week. Most were kids. Adult baseball teams don't seem to abound here in Costa Mesa, or else they can't make it through the formidable approval process to gain access to the field. Spectator attendance is fairly sparse, too; anyone who wants to can usually get a seat right behind home plate. There doesn't seem to be enough interest in the games there for somebody to energize a PA system and give some kind of running sportscaster commentary, as they did in the little league field I grew up next to in Illinois.

There seems to be some kind of a conflict going on in Costa Mesa between "active" and "passive" parks. As I recall, former mayor Bever got one or more parks strewn with boulders to prevent people from playing pickup games of soccer there. Of course, the players were mostly Hispanic, a term of opprobrium here in Costa Mesa, but I should point out that if a field is strewn with boulders, Hispanics are not the only persons prevented from playing there, nor is soccer the only activity thereby prevented. Kids have as much trouble with boulders as Mexicans, and kids playing catch (seen any lately?) are as troubled by big rocks in their way as adults trying to kick a ball in a straight line. Nor can neighborhood chums get together for a game of six-man football. It just ain't happenin'.

When I was a kid, we'd use the park for running, kite-flying, catch, football games with as few as three players on the field in a game, top-spinning, archery, playing with the dog, handicrafts in summer, swings, picnics, throwing boomerangs, flying model aircraft (never could get the damn thing started) and just walking through during the day. In winter (it snowed there) we'd build snow forts and have snowball fights. At night in summer, we'd play hide-and-go-seek, except sometimes the park people would hang a bedsheet and show movies on it. There was the occasional neighborhood fair, with penny-pitching games, cakewalks, raffles, and other fun stuff to separate people from their cash for noble purposes. The little league field was an innovation, and games were always well-attended, with an announcer to name the players as they came up to bat. Free; nobody paid admission.

The thrust here in Costa Mesa seems to be that all youth-activity sports must be tightly controlled by none other than the reigning city council, that each must be regimented on its own field, with all non-approved entities, kids, adults, and of course Mexicans, prohibited from participating, and that the fields must be closed, locked, and declared off-limits when politically-approved persons are not using them. As a non-politically-approved person, I do not know whether approval costs money to get, but it wouldn't surprise me if it did.

In short, Parks and Recreation seems intent on taking all the fun out of parks for kids and people, and making them regimented, stultified places where only "approved activities" take place, and where we do not dare tread on the grass nor walk, nor kick a ball, outside the designated boundaries, especially without a permit. Where's the fun in that? Isn't recreation supposed to be fun? Isn't it assumed that regimentation is anathema to it? Aren't parks supposed to be places where couples can stroll, where kids can play, where old men (like me) can doze on a park bench or on the grass? In this connection, maybe the homeless in Lions Park are a good thing, a reaction to the chicken guano that seems to be getting imposed by the gluttonous demands for "more youth athletic fields". They, at least, are using the park for one of the purposes for which it was originally intended.

We oughta stop for a minute, make it clear that the parks here are for everybody, remove the damn boulders, and renew our pledge to keep hands off Fairview Park.

Admired by revolutionary leaders, twice wounded in courageous fighting, Arnold could easily have seen his accomplishments chiseled onto every Revolutionary War memorial in the country. Instead, his name is a historical sneer."

Bruce --I note that Dennis identifies himself on Costa Mesa Politics and Personalities only as "Dennis P.", and only in fine print at the end of each post. Search it yourself; "Popp" never appears.

He also appears awfully reluctant to name names... Unlike you and me, whose names are hanging out for all to see. Wonder why? worried about defamation of character actions, afraid of reprisals, doesn't want to hurt people's feelings, doesn't want his house toilet-papered,...?

I don't think everything Righeimer is bad, but when a politician goes in a wrongheaded direction against the howling protests of his constituents several times (Appointment of Steve, the outsourcing fiasco, the layoff notices, the 42-space parking lot on an Indian burial ground, the first charter attempt, probably a bunch of others) one tends to be a little less "take me, I'm yours" and a little more skeptical (or if you prefer, distrustful) of his motives. Seems to me as though you're telling us, "Ignore that little man behind the curtain" and positing that despite all his missteps, Jim is lily-white and pure, and probably more worthy of our faith than Jesus.

I recommend you develop a more pessimistic attitude here. After all, a pessimist can only be PLEASANTLY surprised.

You and I are in the minority when it comes to putting our positions in writing. In some commentators' cases, for good reason, I would be embarrassed if I were them too. That spans the ideological spectrum in my opinion.

As for Jim being worthy of praise or damnation, I am not the one to judge. I will only comment on his actions.

Some things are indisputable; he swings a majority on the council; he is required to allow public comment; he is not required to be swayed by public comment; political future will be determined by the voters.

When a politician is elected that has been as consistent as Jim, one of two things (maybe some of both) can be surmised:

1) He has the support of enough election participants to be elected

2) Election participants are not paying attention

In any case, I do support Jim in reigning in unfunded liabilities, reforming pension and health benefits, and finding ways to extricate our city from the onerous oversight of a Sacramento run by big labor.

As in all things; wrong-headed to one Costa Mesa resident may be perfectly right-headed to another.

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